2005: Starting Our Retirement Home

Not much happened on our place in Tetonia from 1992 to 1996 as our family lived in northern Idaho where we attended college; Jeff doing graduate work studying wolverine in the Sawtooth Mountains of Stanley, Idaho and Cheryl working on a double major, cartography and geography. In 1996, after completing our various college committments, we moved our family back to southeast Idaho. Jeff continued to work for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game as a non-game biologist and Cheryl used her cartography skills to become part owner of a consulting company.

Again close to our place in the Big Hole Mountains, we spent almost every weekend visiting our little cabin. We were on a mission.....Late summer, early fall the cows would infiltrate our place, moving down from the national forest allotment above. A moo here and there we don't mind, but constant bovine commuication and pooping is not our idea of peace and quiet. We became quite obsessed with property boundaries and started building our "Sawbuck" fence. It seemed a daunting task but we were presistant and focused on one 12 foot section at a time. Between 1996 and 2002 we built approximately 2,500 feet of sawbuck fence.

Jeff retired from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, and we moved from Idaho to Missoula, Montana in 2002 to work on another wolverine project in Glacier National Park for the U.S. Forest Service. Again it became more difficult to visit our property in the Big Hole Mountains. We visited our place off and on for the next 3 years but in 2004, Jeff and I began to think of "the property" as our home and Missoula as the place that we lived. We had made a transition in our minds and knew that we would again live in Idaho. Thus, it was time to start creating our home, carving out our future on the 40 acres we had purchased years before. We started spring 2005.

Before this time, the property had owned us. We had tread lightly, without much disturbance of "it's" original, wild existence. If this was to be our permanent home, some changes would have to be made. I knew this was a defining moment in my life just as I knew we must "own" the property. Tears ran down my face as I watched the grader move slowly up our little grassy two track, churning the meadow grass before it's wide blade. Our driveway would still be wandering but must have a solid base.


Knowing we would feel cramped in our one room cabin, we decided to build a 10x12 bedroom addition on the east side, on the deck we had built the year before. We purchased two sided logs from a local sawmill and started to work.


While busy on our bedroom addition, the excavator came to clear the area behind our cabin for a garage and shop. If we were to be snowbound for the winter months with ingress and egress limited to cross country skis or snowmachine, we needed a place to work, to create and a place to store "our stuff".



I grew quite excited about the prospect of a flat place to walk and a place to park our vehicles close to the cabin. No more would we slip and slide up the grassy two track behind the cabin to a flat place to turn around 1/4 a mile away. Things would be just a little easier for us.


We spent many evenings planning our place, directing the development of our homestead with the goal of small area impact.




The weather turned snowy mid-October so we added a tarp.....


The end of October found us all wrapped up for winter, a new driveway and a flat place for our garage. We would ski in for visits in the winter but for now..... we wait for spring!